Simon Peers and Nicholas Godley teamed up to create materials from the silk produced from Golden Orb Spiders in Madagascar. They collected 1.2 million of these spiders and extracted their silk over the course of three years to create two golden silk capes.

This shawl is the world’s largest piece of spider-silk cloth ever created, which is now on display at the V&A Museum in London. No spiders were harmed in the making of the materials, and once the spider’s silk had been extracted, the spider was released back into the wild where they replenished their silk supplies in about a week. Each spider extracts ~30-50 m of thread each time the silk is extracted.

Emily Smith is the driving force behind Vancouver Mini Maker Faire and Vancouver Maker Foundation. She is an avid textile artist and community organizer with a focus on facilitating collaborative and creative workspaces as well as maker-oriented projects and educational programming.

“No spiders were harmed in the making of the materials”
Who gives a s**t?

Jaime

I do. Spiders are amazing creatures. How about a little respect for the planet?

http://blog.singlemormonmommy.com velda

+1, Jamie. Spiders are a little creepy but incredibly amazing ;)

12L14

Some are amazingly delicious(sic!) too – so even more respect upon them ;)

ps. are those shawl bulletproof? ;)

http://vyosnashop.com Matt the Slowfashionist

Haha, give me a cent for every time I’ve heard that “ps.” question :)
They say that spider silk is as strong as steel wire of the same thickness. I guess spiderman could use a costume made of it! (if it wasn’t shrinking so much when in contact with water…). Mayby when they make it thicker and add some hydrophobic coating they could make a bulletproof suit :)